Lana couldn’t cure any of that.
Sometimes she wished she was back at Hermit Jim’s cabin.
It was not the first time she’d had that thought. She had often thought of the strange cabin in the desert with its quirky little lawn—now all brown and dead, most likely.
It’s where she had found sanctuary after the crash. And then again, briefly, after escaping from the coyote pack.
The cabin itself had been burned to the ground. It was nothing but ash. And gold, of course. Hermit Jim’s stash of gold might have been melted, but it would still be there beneath the floorboards.
The gold. From the mine.
The mine . . .
She took a big gulp from the Styrofoam cup and burned her tongue. The pain helped her focus.
The mine. That day was clear in her memory, but it was the clarity of a well-remembered nightmare.
At the time she hadn’t known that the FAYZ meant the disappearance of all adults. She’d gone to the mine in search of the hermit, or hoping at least to find his missing truck and use it to get to town.
She’d found the hermit, dead in the mouth of the mine. Not disappeared, dead. Which meant he’d been killed before the FAYZ.
The coyotes had come after her then and driven her deeper into the mine. And there she’d found . . . it. The thing. The Darkness, the coyotes called it: the Darkness.
She remembered the way her feet had felt heavy as bricks. The way her heart had slowed down and thudded, each beat like a blow from a sledgehammer. The dread that went deeper than simple fear. The sickly green glow that made her think of pus, disease, a cancer.
The dream state that had overtaken her . . . the heavy-lidded eyes and mind gone blank and the feeling of being invaded, of . . .
Come to me.
“Ah!”
She had crushed the cup. Hot coffee all over her arm.
Lana was sweating. Her breathing was labored. She took a deep breath and it was as if she’d forgotten how until that very moment.
It was in her head still, that monster in the mine shaft. It had its hook in her. Sometimes she was sure she heard its voice. A hallucination, surely. Surely not the Darkness itself. It was miles away. Far beneath the ground. It couldn’t . . .
Come to me.
“I can’t forget it,” she whispered to Patrick. “I can’t get away from it.”
In the early days after she had come out of the desert and joined this strange community of children, Lana had felt almost at peace. Almost. There had been, from the start, a sense of damage done, an invisible wound with no specific location except that it was inside her.
That unseen, unreal, unhealed wound had reopened. She told herself at first that it would go away. It would heal. A psychic scab would form. But if that was true, if she was healing, why did it hurt more with each passing day? How had that dreadful voice grown from faint, distant whisper to insistent murmur?
Come to me. I need you.
It had words now, that urgent, demanding voice.
“I’m going crazy, Patrick,” Lana told her dog. “It’s inside me, and I am going crazy.”
Mary Terrafino woke up. She rolled out of bed. Morning. She should go back to sleep: she was exhausted. But she would not fall back to sleep, she knew that. She had things to do.
First things first, she stumbled to her bathroom and used her bare foot to pull the scale across the tile floor. There was a special spot for the scale: aligned with the center of the mirror over the sink, upper-right corner of the scale precisely in line with the tile.
She removed her sleep shirt and stepped onto the scale.
First reading. Step off.
Second reading. Step off.
Three times made it official.
Eighty-one pounds.
She’d been 128 pounds when the FAYZ came.
She still looked fat. There were still pockets of chubbiness here and there. No matter what anyone else said. Mary could see the flab. So no breakfast for her. Which was fine, given that breakfast at the day care would be oatmeal made with powdered milk and sweetened with pink packets of Sweet’n Low. Healthy enough—and much, much better than what most people were getting—but not exactly worth gaining weight over.
Mary popped her Prozac, plus two tiny red Sudafed and a multivitamin. The Prozac kept depression at bay—mostly—and the Sudafed helped keep her from getting hungry. The vitamin would keep her healthy, she hoped.
She dressed quickly, T-shirt, sweatpants, sneakers. Each was roomy. She was determined not to wear anything more body-conscious until she had really lost some weight.
She went to the laundry room and spilled a dryer full of cloth diapers into a plastic bag. There were still a few disposable diapers in storage, but they were saving those for emergencies. They had made the switch to cloth a month earlier. It was gross and everyone hated it, but as Mary had pointed out to her grumbling workers, the Pampers factory wasn’t exactly delivering anymore.
Down the stairs with the bag bump-bumping along.
Sam was with Astrid and Little Pete in the kitchen. Mary didn’t want to interrupt—or be nagged about having breakfast—so she let herself quietly out the front door.
Five minutes later she was at the day care.
The day care had fared badly in the battle. The wall it shared with the hardware store had been blown out. So now the gaping hole was covered by plastic sheeting that had to be retaped just about every day. It was a reminder of how close they had come to disaster. The coyote pack had been in this very room, holding these same children hostage, while Drake Merwin preened and gloated.
Mary’s brother, John, was already at the day care waiting for her.
“Hey, Mary,” John said. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be sleeping.”
John was working the morning shift, 5:00 A.M. to noon, breakfast to just before lunch. Mary was supposed to take over at lunch and work straight through until 10:00 P.M. Lunch through dinner through sleep time, with an hour at the end to work out schedules and clean up. Then she’d have time to go home, watch some DVDs while she worked out on the treadmill in the basement. That was the schedule. Eight hours of sleep and a few hours free in the morning.
But in reality she often spent two or three hours exercising at night. Going after those last few pounds. On the treadmill, down in the basement, where Astrid wouldn’t hear her and ask her why.
Most days she consumed fewer than seven hundred calories. On a really good day it would be half that.
She hugged John. “What’s up, little brother? What’s today’s crisis?”
John had a list. He read it off his Warriors notebook. “Pedro has a loose tooth. He also had an accident last night. Zosia claims Julia punched her, so they’re fighting and refusing to play together. I think maybe Collin has a fever . . . anyway, he’s kind of, you know, cranky. I caught Brady trying to run away this morning. She was going to look for her mommy.”
The list went on and as it did, some of the kids ran over to hug Mary, to get a kiss, to get an appreciation of their hairdo, to earn an approving “good job” for the way they had brushed their teeth.
Mary nodded. The list was about like this every day.
A guy named Francis came in, pushed rudely past Mary. Then he realized whom he had just shouldered aside, turned back to her with a scowl, and said, “Okay, I’m here.”
“First time?” Mary asked.
“What, am I supposed to be sorry? I’m not a babysitter.”
This scene, too, had been repeated every day since peace had come to Perdido Beach. “Okay, here’s the thing, kid,” Mary said. “I know you don’t want to be here, and I don’t care. No one wants to be here, but the littles have to be taken care of. So lose the attitude.”
“Why don’t you just take care of these kids? At least you’re a girl.”
“I’m not,” John pointed out.
Mary said, “See that easel? There are three lists on there, one list for each of the daily helpers. Pick a
list. That’s what you do. Whatever is on the list. And you smile while you’re doing it.”
Francis marched over and checked the list.
John said, “I’ll bet you a cookie he doesn’t pick diaper duty.”
“No bet,” Mary said. “Besides, there are no cookies.”
“I miss cookies,” John said wistfully.
“Hey,” Francis yelled. “All these lists suck.”
“Yes,” Mary agreed. “Yes, they do.”
“This all sucks.”
“Please stop saying ‘sucks.’ I don’t want to have three-year-olds repeating it all day.”
“Man, when my birthday comes, I’m stepping out,” Francis sulked.
“Fine. I’ll be sure not to schedule you after that. Now, pick a work list and do it. I don’t want to have to waste Sam’s time calling him over here to motivate you.”
Francis stomped back to the easel.
“Stepping out,” Mary said to John, and made a face. “How many people have hit the magic fifteen so far? Only two have poofed. People talk about it. But they don’t actually do it.”
The FAYZ had eliminated everyone over the age of fourteen. No one knew why. At least, Mary didn’t, although she had overheard Sam and Astrid whispering in a way that made her think they might know more than they admitted.
A fourteen-year-old who reached his fifteenth birthday would also disappear. Poof. If he let himself. If he decided to “step out.”
What happened during what kids called Stepping Out was now known to just about everyone. The way subjective time would slow to a crawl. The appearance of the person you loved and trusted most to beckon you across, to urge you to leave the FAYZ. And the way this person transformed into a monster if you resisted.
You had a choice: stay in the FAYZ, or . . . But no one knew just what the “or” was. Maybe it was escape back into the old world. Maybe it was a trip to some whole new place.
Maybe it was death.
Mary noticed John looking intensely at her. “What?” she said.
“You wouldn’t ever . . .”
Mary smiled and ruffled his curly red hair. “Never. I would never leave you. Missing Mom and Dad?”
John nodded. “I keep thinking about how many times I made them mad.”
“John . . .”
“I know. I know that doesn’t matter. But it’s like . . .” He couldn’t find the words, so he made the motion of a knife stabbing his heart.
Someone was tugging at Mary’s shirt from behind. She looked around and with a sinking heart saw a little boy named . . . named . . . she couldn’t remember his name. But the second little boy behind him she remembered was Sean. She knew why they were there. They had both recently had their fifth birthdays. The age limit for the day care was four. At age five you had to move out—hopefully to a house with some responsible older kids.
“Hi, kids. What’s up?” Mary asked as she brought her face down to their level.
“Um . . . ,” the first one said. And then he burst into tears.
She shouldn’t do it, she knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself from putting her arms around the little boy. And then Sean started crying as well, so the embrace was extended, and John was in there, too, and Mary heard herself saying of course, of course they could come back, just for today, just for a little while.
FOUR
106 HOURS, 8 MINUTES
COATES ACADEMY WAS quite a bit the worse for wear. Battles had damaged the façade of the main building. There was a hole in the whitewashed brick so big, you could see an entire second-story classroom, a cross-section of the floor beneath it, and a jagged gap that didn’t quite reach to the top of the first-story window below. Most of the glass in the windows was gone. The kids had made an effort to keep the elements out by duct-taping sheets of plastic over the holes, but the tape had loosened and now the plastic and the tape hung limp, stirring with the occasional breeze. The building looked as if it had been through a war. It had been.
The grounds were a mess. Grass that had always been trimmed to obsessive perfection in the old days now grew wild in some areas and had gone yellow as hay in others. And weeds pushed up through the circular gravel driveway where once parents’ minivans and SUVs and luxury sedans had lined up.
The plumbing was out in half the building, toilets overflowing and reeking. The smaller buildings, the art classroom, and the dormitories were in better shape, but Drake insisted on staying in the main building. He had occupied the office of the school shrink, a place where in the old days Drake had standing appointments for counseling and testing.
Do you still dream of hurting animals, Drake?
No, Doc, I dream of hurting you.
The office was an armory now. Drake’s guns, nine of them, ranging from hunting rifles with scopes to handguns, were laid out on a table. He kept them unloaded, all but two, the guns he carried on him. He’d hidden the ammunition for the other guns: there was no one Drake trusted. The ammunition, never enough of it, to Drake’s thinking, rested behind the ceiling tiles and in air-conditioning vents.
Drake sat watching a DVD on the plasma screen he’d stolen. The movie was Saw II. The sound effects were so great. Drake had the volume up high enough to rattle one of the few surviving panes of glass. So he didn’t at first hear Diana’s voice when she said, “He wants you.”
Drake turned, sensing her presence. He flicked his tentacle arm, the arm that gave him his nickname, Whip Hand, and turned off the set. “What do you want?” he demanded with a scowl.
“He wants you,” Diana repeated.
Drake loved the fear in her eyes. Tough-chick Diana: snarky, sarcastic, superior Diana. Scared Diana. Scared of him and what he could do to her.
“Who wants me?”
“Caine. He’s up.”
“He’s been up before,” Drake said.
“He’s back. Mostly. He’s back and he wants you and Bug.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ll get there when I get there.” He flicked his whip and turned the set back on. “Great, now I missed the best part. Where’s the remote? I can’t rewind without the remote.”
“You want me to tell Caine to wait?” Diana asked innocently. “No problem. I’ll just go tell him you’re too busy to see him.”
Drake took a deep breath and glared at her. Slowly the whip moved toward her, the end twitching with anticipation, wanting to wrap around her neck.
“Go ahead, do it,” she challenged him. “Go on, Drake. Go ahead and defy Caine.”
His cold eyes flinched, just a little, but he knew she’d seen it and it made him mad.
Not today. Not yet. Not until Caine took care of Sam.
Drake coiled the whip. He had a way of wrapping it sinuously around his waist. But the arm was never entirely still, so it always looked like a pink and gray anaconda squeezing him, always looked like Drake was its prey.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Diana? Me fighting Caine. Sorry to disappoint you. I am one hundred percent loyal to Caine. We’re like brothers, the two of us. Not like him and Sam, more like blood brothers.” He winked at her. “The brotherhood of the Darkness, Diana. Me and him, we’ve both been there. We’ve both faced it.”
Drake knew Diana was eaten up with curiosity about the thing in the mine shaft, the thing that had given Drake his arm after Sam had burned his old arm off. But Drake wasn’t going to give her anything. Let her wonder. Let her worry. “Let’s go see the boss.”
Caine looked better already. Whatever sickness had been consuming him these last three months, imprisoning him in a world of fevers and nightmares, must have finally run its course.
Too late for Chunk.
The memory made Drake smile. Fat-ass Chunk flying through the air, smacking into a solid wall, hitting it so hard, he actually went through it. Man, that had been something to see.
After that, no one—including Drake—had been crazy enough to be around Caine. Even now Drake was wary. Only Diana was desperate enough to stay and chan
ge Caine’s soiled sheets and spoon-feed him soup.
“You look good, Caine,” Drake said.
“I look like hell,” Caine said. “But my head is clear.”
Drake thought that probably wasn’t true. He’d spent just a few hours with the Darkness himself, and his head still wasn’t clear of it, not by a long shot. He heard the voice in his head, sometimes. He heard it. And he was pretty sure Caine did, too.
Once you heard that voice, you never stopped hearing it, Drake thought. He found the idea comforting.
“Bug, are you in here?” Caine asked.
“Right here.”
Drake almost jumped. Bug was just three feet away, not quite invisible but not quite visible, either. He had the mutant power of camouflage, like a chameleon. Looking at Bug when he was using his power, the most you might notice was a sort of ripple in the scenery, a bending of light.
“Knock it off,” Caine growled.
Bug became visible as the snot-nosed little creep he was. “Sorry,” he said. “I just . . . I didn’t . . .”
“Don’t worry, I’m not in the mood to throw anyone into a wall,” Caine said dryly. “I have a job for you, Bug.”
“Go into Perdido Beach again?”
“No. No, that’s what Sam is expecting,” Caine said. “We stay out of Perdido Beach. We don’t need the town. They can have the town. For now, anyway.”
“Yeah, let them keep what we can’t take away. That’s very generous,” Diana said, mocking them.
“It’s not about territory,” Caine said. “It’s about power. Not powers, Drake, power.” He put his hand on Bug’s shoulder. “Bug, you’re the key person on this. I need your skills.”
“I don’t know what else I can see in Perdido Beach,” Bug said.
“Forget Perdido Beach. Like I said, it’s about power. Nuclear power.” Caine winked at Diana and slapped Drake’s shoulder, working his old charm, getting them to believe in him again. But Drake wasn’t fooled: Caine was weak in his body and disturbed in his mind. The old confidence was subdued: Caine was a shadow. Although he was a shadow who could throw a person through a wall. Drake’s whip hand twitched against the small of his back.
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